Winston has continued to toe touch since last Friday. Sometimes he actually gets the pad of his foot onto the ground, but he's not putting a lot of weight on it. He's doing so well getting around that we offered to help him up the stairs with the sling but he wants nothing to do with them. I think he remembers falling, so he seems scared of them. I've been leaving the baby gate off of the one that goes upstairs so that Josie has an easier time getting to the door when she needs to. She has taken to spending some time with Winston down in his room, she's so sweet!
We've been spending nearly every afternoon outside in the yard. I got out a couple of our camping cables -- we always keep cables with us when we go camping so that we could keep the dogs securely near us. This breed has no respect for tent zippers, and they will go investigate sounds in the middle of the night, so we learned with our first one that we'd have to keep her on a cable even when she is inside the tent. That's the only time that they're ever tied up and they're always with us, so there's no risk of them running to the end of a cable. Anyway, Winston learned about cables as a puppy and he's fine being on one, so I've been spending time weeding in the yard so that he can be outdoors. Weeding is pretty much a hopeless cause since we've got more weeds than grass, but I'm slowly eliminating certain types of weeds. LOL! I'll keep telling myself that and maybe one day it will come true. It gives me something to do while I'm out with the dogs.
Winston can't be loose in the yard because he wants to play soccer with one of his (now Josie's) balls, and he wants to play with her. Even on a leash he tries to do both and I have to scold him. That's all it takes to stop him, but he's not happy about it.
As kind as Josie is, she is not very careful of him. When she sees him getting attention she will come over and flop down to get some too. They have no sense of personal space, so she often flops right down on his leg and bends the joint sideways and makes him yelp. I have to push her away and tell her to be careful, but she doesn't really "get it".
Winston just came upstairs! It was dinnertime and I just brought them in from the yard and came up to get Josie's dish (the dog food is in the garage so her dish is the farthest away) and she followed me up and after a few seconds hesitation, so did Winston. I just about had a heart attack, but he seemed to do ok. He was very careful and I think going up is easier than down. I quickly put the baby gate up across the top of the stairs so that he doesn't go crashing down. They ate dinner and he spent a nice evening lounging about while we watched some TV. When it was time for him to go out to pee before bed, I got the sling and leash out and attempted to help him down the stairs. That didn't work so well. I seemed to make things worse than if he had done it on his own, and he nearly dragged me down with him. Oh well, the baby gate gets moved to the bottom of that stairway so that he stays in his room until tomorrow. I don't want to have him try it too much at first.
He seems scared of the stairs again. I keep offering to help him up, but as soon as he sees the sling he goes to his bed. hmmmm... finally I just leave the leash on and offer to go up with him (to keep him slow and controlled). Again, he goes to his bed. Ok, he's going to stay in his room today. Later in the evening Don walks him to go potty and next thing I know he's coming up the stairs on the deck. These are steeper and there are 10 steps instead of 7 so this doesn't really make me happy, but I guess they're less scary than the ones inside the house. I don't want him going down these steps though. He gets to spend another evening with us, and this time when it's time for bed, I only use the leash to keep him from going too fast down the stairs. He kind of hippety hops down them mostly on 3 legs but with a dash of toe touch in there somewhere. Doesn't give me a great feeling of comfort, but he's safe at the bottom again for the night.
Today I didn't try the sling, but offered to go up with him on the leash and he actually went up the stairs. He got to spend the day upstairs with me while I worked and then we went outdoors for a few hours and then he came upstairs again for the evening. He's handling himself on the stairs much better with every attempt. I'm not as worried about him anymore.
We ran out of antibiotics on Tuesday. I can't remember if we were supposed to call AMVS when we got to this point? I called them and they said that I should set up an appoint for next week and they'll evaluate him at that time.
Cross our fingers that the infection doesn't come back once all the antibiotics are out of his system.
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